MQ Serpentis, A Mystery

Volume 20 number 2 (1991)

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Dorrit Hoffleit

Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511

Abstract

MQ Serpentis (5 Ser, BD +2 2944, HR 5694, ADS 9584) has been catalogued as a variable with amplitude of only 0.1V magnitude. Before the days of UBV it was suspected of being variable. It seems probable that the variable is not the primary of the 5.11V magnitude double but rather its 10th magnitude companion at 11 arcseconds away, with a predicted amplitude of about two magnitudes.